A Plea to My Tribe

Darling, my darlings,

I know my happiness is of the utmost importance to you, possibly as much as it is to myself. 

I know you would help me bury a body at three in the morning, that you would sing Disney movies in your pajamas with me for eight hours straight. 

I know that if I needed anything or was anywhere you would be there in an instant, with whatever I needed, whiskey, a condom, a rifle. 

But I need you to let me process in my own time. 

I need you to let me have my choices. 

Maybe they'll be wrong, but fuck, at least I can know I tried. 

Life doesn't answer the cries of your heart every day.

It doesn't even answer them every year. 

And Life took the deepest, strongest desire in my heart and it handed it to me, carefully placing it in my hand, to relish and absolutely delight in. 

And then thirty five sublime days later it took that desire away from me in its entirety. 

I won't be able, physically or mentally, or even spiritually able, to accept such an offering and its violent shift as quickly as you'd like me to.

I longed for such a reunion for three hundred and sixty five days. 

Surely you can understand I might need several more to accept its never going to be placed back into my hands.

If I even can ever accept that. 

I'm not going to become Emily Dickinson and sit alone in my room writing poems about the love that left me. 

I even already contacted the guy who took me to the symphony and he said he'd love to see me again. 

I will find the fuck with someone else. 

I will sip cocktails with you and talk about the guys I'm going on dates with and all the weird shit they do in bed.  

But my heart.

My heart is not going to be able to close the door on this unfinished story, however much you think it should. 

I can't. 

And it won't. 

And that doesn't make me weak or wrong or foolish.

That makes me strong. 

For believing in something entirely beyond me, beyond my grasp, beyond the logical order of anything and everything I can see and understand or foolishly try to comprehend. 

I need you to trust me. 

And not try and change me. 

And maybe you do know more than I do and maybe you can see what I can't because you're not in it and I'm covered. 

I'm cloaked in the knowledge of experiencing such ecstasy. 

But maybe you don't know. 

And maybe no one can. 

And maybe that's the point. 

To trust the perfect order in the chaos we think is Timing. 

And maybe I will meet Mr. Wonderful on any one of the countless dates I go on. 

And you know I will continue dating, continue searching for a connection that intoxicates my soul.

But please accept my heart. 

And its limits. 

And it's overwhelming, unruly desires. 

You all thought I was mad last summer for believing anything still existed and look what transpired. 

It did.

And it still does.

I need time. 

I need it to be okay for me to miss him and to believe he's missing me even more. 

I need to believe he'll want me in his arms again. 

Because I was just enveloped in them.

It was all so completely mine.

I can't be the girl you want me to be who hates him and thinks he is wicked or that it was all malicious manipulation. 

I just can't.

Because it's not.

It's a complicated mirage for something that is actually simple.

We're connected.

And nothing can change that. 

If it's another three hundred and sixty five days we will still stare into each other with awe and wonder. 

And I don't want to fight you. 

Because I love you. 

And I need you. 

More than I even need him. 

But you have to know.

My heart. 

My wounded heart needs to be handled with care. 

And Hope is something I may never let go of. 

But I will never wait. 

And you have to know that. 

As you know me.

More than he maybe ever will.